One of my favorite authors, Stephen King, often talks of why we like scary stories. I was reminded of this a couple weeks ago, while I was trying to explain to my mom on the phone why a) I was looking forward to playing Amnesia: Dark Descent and b) Why, and how, I can stand watching horror movies alone, and reading horror novels just before going to bed.
Truth be told, my fascination with horror started out when I started reading books for pleasure at the age of 13(ish). Fantasy was alright, and I'd read a few crime books, but horror just had some sort of primal hold over my imagination already at that point.
Stephen King has said that we like horror because it is life-affirming; We come face-to-face with the ultimate horror, and as readers we escape the final horror which may or may not befall the characters. I guess that some of that is part of why I love reading scary stories (Or watching them, or playing them as games).
I can't exactly pinpoint what it IS about horror stories that keeps me coming back - maybe it's the thrills, maybe it's the settings whether they be of the Lovecraftian persuasion, or the Stephen King kind. I was stumped for an answer that my mom didn't ridicule on the phone (but lovingly), and I could just hear her marking that up in her mind as a win for her.
I've always read a lot - not just horror novels. I love Sci-fi and Fantasy books as well, and many, many other kinds. I'll read a book for the story, or an author's new take on a known concept in horror stories, but I won't hold out on reading most anything else, either.
One of my favorite books in recent years was Laird Barron's "The Imago Sequence" which I ended up reading in a fevery haze, since I fell ill with a nasty flu shortly after buying the Imago book. It ended up being one of the most horrifying experiences for me, mostly because the fever gave the whole book an extra feeling of unreality.
That might be one of the draws to horror for me, after all; The unreal. Supernatural. The Thing That Should Not Be...I was raised in an atheist home, and most of Denmark is actually atheist (or doesn't really observe their christianity except for in the comfort of their own homes).
I would love to believe in something more than the life we have, some sort of afterlife; Or the existance of paranormal events outside the brains of loonies or drunk / high people, but I simply don't.
That doesn't mean I don't enjoy pop culture of any kind including the paranormal, though.
Wow, this turned out wall 'o text'y O_o
-Barl0we
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